


exchange

by dragonsong (NekoAisu)



Series: FFXIV Write 2019 [29]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Gender-Neutral Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Other, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 22:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20881880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/dragonsong
Summary: There are few things left to those who wait. Emet-Selch knows this intimately.





	exchange

**Author's Note:**

> For FFXIVWrite 2019!
> 
> Day 30 | Darkness
> 
> Tumblr post here: https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/post/188053969379/ffxivwrite-2019-prompt-30-exchange

There are few things left to those who wait. Emet-Selch knows this intimately.

Hydaelyn took all from him and left naught but the torment of a life eternal. She sends her champions after him, those who think something so paltry as auracite could possibly prove to be his undoing, and he snuffs every one with the ease of a child blowing out their birthday candles.

Except for this one.

Emet-Selch is not one to be softened up by past memories. He knows he is surely a fool in many regards, but he is not a sentimental one. He plans to bring back the past, yes, but it’s not a soft or soothing thought. To fully realize his goals, he needs to force Rejoinings that the pitiful mortal imitations may finally achieve some level of immortality. Even a facsimile would do in the time between the rebirth of Zodiark and that of Emet’s entire world.

They had been his world, once, that fractured excuse for a Warrior of Light. They’d given him up, too.

All because of Hydaelyn.

It hadn’t been by his own faults that they left in so spectacularly a manner. He’d been one for drama, but them sacrificing all to summon a sentient hunk of aetherically charged crystal? That was the last thing he had expected from them and yet it had been obvious in hindsight. 

_“Is there no reason to our isolationist society? What use do our wisdoms hold if there are no others to share it with. We must lend aid.”_

He had no talent for tampering with things such as the lifestream, but they’d dipped their hands in it up to the shoulder with ease. He remembers how they’d changed, becoming steadily less like him. Less… alive. Amaurotines are solitary and secretive by nature, but they fear loss. They fear being forgotten. To be left without their wisdoms. 

He had watched them forget things, little by little, until their hands were permanently dyed with aether and the blood of masses. He watched them doom each and every one of his and theirs. 

All for a primal. 

(For him, they’d cried, as if Emet-Selch had want of their construct and the destruction it had wrought.)

Watching the shattered and barely-rejoined remnants of what they used to be flail about in a desperate search for relief from the Light inside of them, he sees no resemblance. They are nothing to him. Not a facsimile, even. 

He waits for them to find him. Fights them. Tells them the history they share. Tells them to remember him. 

All of them. 

And he dissolves to the unfamiliar darkness of the lifestream for the first time. 

**Author's Note:**

> xiv tunglr | https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/  
main | https://kiriami-sama.tumblr.com/  
main | https://twitter.com/flamingacekiri


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